Wide Vs. KU

One of the most difficult decisions a self-published author has to make is whether to be wide (list on all of the vendors they can) or whether to throw in with Amazon only so they can be in Kindle Unlimited.

And as we move forward with this whole self-publishing thing it seems to me that the voices on both sides of the argument get more and more vocal. The Smashwords year-end round up was basically a “don’t blame me when you can’t support yourself with your writing five years from now because you gave Amazon all the power and helped force their competitors out of business” post.

And there may be some merit to what he’s saying. If too many authors are in KU thereby depriving other platforms of content and helping to drive down the price a reader is willing to pay for an individual title, that will have long-term consequences that aren’t pretty.

At the same time I know of authors who are making $200K up to a million a year because they’re in KU. How do you tell someone to walk away from a million dollars to support the long-term viability of the ebook market?

I in principle support being wide, but I just moved all of my romance titles into KU.

(1) I can’t get a Bookbub promo for those titles (some are too short, others just aren’t competitive enough in a highly competitive genre).

(2) Most other promo sites have minimal reach outside of Amazon. (Even when I run promos on wide titles I get 90% Amazon sales.)

(3) The promo sites with a wider reach are overpriced for what they deliver so running those promos is a losing proposition.

(4) I’m not a big enough name to get merchandising opportunities at places like Nook or Apple.

That means that those romance titles sold a few copies based on free downloads that led to a sale of a collection (1:100 for me) or as part of a Kobo promo. But other than that, they were dead in the water.

I can put those same titles into KU, run AMS ads against them, and see sales most days along with page reads.

So for me for those titles the decision became stay wide and earn basically nothing on them versus go into KU and earn something. And, yes, that something may one day become nothing as Amazon gains power and sucks us all dry (which I don’t doubt will happen), but when the alternative is nothing, what do you do?

Now, on the flip side of that, I do have my fantasy series wide at the moment. It’s taken a hit by being wide. Instead of ranking in the 30K range on Amazon and selling steadily most days at $6.99, it’s now selling every few days at $4.99. But that title does get Bookbubs. And each one I get seems to help a little bit more with organic sales on other platforms. So I’m letting it stay wide until the next series is released. Short-term, I’m taking a hit with lower sales. Long-term, I have the potential for steadier sales at higher sales.

I also have all of my non-fiction wide and pretty much always have. (I did run most of them through KU in 2016 when you had to be in KU to start a Sponsored Product ad.)

One reason is you just don’t earn a lot for page reads on non-fiction even if someone reads the whole book, at least not compared to paid sales. And if people are interested in the subject, about half will probably just buy the book if it’s not in KU. Plus, having been in the StoryBundle with two of my Excel, I’m committed to keeping all of the M.L. Humphrey titles wide in case anyone reads those books and wants to read more of those titles. I don’t want to force them to go to Amazon for that.

So that’s where I’ve fallen out on things as of January 2018: romance in KU, fantasy that isn’t written to market wide, non-fiction wide.

Will that change? Probably.

The woman who runs the Write Better Faster class asked all of us what our touchstone word for this year is. At the time I didn’t have one. I just had a lot of “so many directions to go in, which do I choose” anxiety that I didn’t give an answer. But I’ve decided my word for this year is: ADAPT.

Honestly, I think that’s the word that every self-publisher (or writer) should embrace every day of every year that they’re trying to make money from their writing.

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Author: M.L. Humphrey

M.L. Humphrey is a former securities regulator, registered stockbroker (although only briefly), and consultant on regulatory and risk-related matters for large financial institutions with expertise in the areas of anti-money laundering regulation, mutual funds, and credit rating agencies. Since 2013 M.L. has also been a published author under a variety of pen names and across a variety of subjects and genres.
View all posts by M.L. Humphrey

2 thoughts on “Wide Vs. KU”

My literary fiction (romance/lit fic/saga) titles just left KU today and are now back on iTunes. I’ll be updating the other retailers next. They were wide for almost two years until the last quarter when one of the authors who published an AMS book that focuses on analysis of data suggested I put the 2-book bundle in KU and who knows? Maybe I’ll make more money with them in KU. I didn’t. I was consistently 60-75% Amazon sales before I went into KU and without the other retailers, that’s exactly what I got when I finally crunched the numbers. So I missed out on the other 35-40% that I would have made wide.

So hopefully I’ll make the same income I did with them again. There’s always that fear that your titles will not do good once out of KU and sometimes I think it happens because we expect it. I’ll do my ads again and see if I can get a Bookbub on the first book like I did last year. Amazon made up 60% of total downloads during that promo although I didn’t see the return that other authors were touting the whole time. Now they say that the tail is no longer there for BB.

In the meantime, my romances are doing well on KU (knock on wood) and I just need to write faster.